Saturday, March 23, 2013

Oh how I hate a wasted opportunity. Red Eye is a brilliant thriller right up until it kicks in with the third act. The whole movie by that point has been a carefully constructed nerve wrecker with Murphy's psychotic hitman keeping terrified McAdams hostage in her seat up on a plane. Once she finds her inner Sarah Connor and they get on the ground, it all goes to shit as Craven turns the film into a Scream-esque hide and seek. Such a shame and above all, a waste. Especially since Murphy brings his A-game. As he usually does.

What a wonderful, warm film. I was expecting perhaps some elevated ('cause it's Scorsese) family movie, but Hugo is so much more than that. It's a fairytale, which older viewers will find just as charming as the younger ones, about finding your place in the world and the consuming sadness of not reaching your dreams. Sounds corny, I know, but in Hugo all of these components interlock beautifully thanks to a clever screenplay which introduces the storypoints via interesting mystery. One of Scorsese's absolute best and rounded up nicely with a spectacular supporting cast from Richard Griffiths to Christopher Lee.

Poor Drew Goddard. Everywhere they write about this film, everyone always just goes on about Joss Whedon who co-wrote this with Goddard. It's Hostel and Killing Zoe all over again. Oh well. Among all the never-ending horror remakes, reboots and US versions of foreing films, TCITW is a truly welcome, original treat. The less I say about the plot the better, really. Just suffice to say that though this movie has been marketed as horror, it's actually one of the funniest flicks of recent years and fucking entertaining to boot.

WARNING! The trailer gives away MAJOR spoilers of the film! In fact, if you want to see this flick, I'd recommend you try to avoid previews of ANY kind. Trust me. The less you know going in, the better.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Flight is Zemeckis' eagerly awaited return to live action which I'd been looking forward to for well over a decade. The film is not what I expected and though it's a very ambitious and hard look at alcoholism via Denzel's pseudo-heroic pilot Whip Whitaker, Flight is by no means an easy film to sit through. You'll be taken to a ride into the kind of a person's psyche who is or at least can be very unpleasant and off putting. Not a very inviting consept, but Washington makes it work with a very good performance. And when it comes to Zemeckis, he does a solid job but personally I'd have loved to have seen a different, more eased kind of return from the master. Then again, Flight is a good film so in a way I feel I shouldn't complain. But.. oh what the hell, at least we finally get to see the gorgeous Nadine Velazquez naked. And the wait was worth it.

The third collaboration between Cronenberg and Mortensen is easily the least exciting of the bunch (the others being A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises). I was expecting more from the meeting and ultimately clash between Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Fassbender) given the talent in hand but A Dangerous Method is ultimately just an elevated, steady character triangle. It's very well acted and Cronenberg keeps the mood stable but there are no real fireworks of emotion which is kind of a let down when you consider the film tells a tale of two titans of psychology. Good but not great.

The first three Die Hards are classics (the third being a personal favorite), the fourth film was good but already stretched the boundaries and now with this outing Die Hard has very little soul left. A Good Day To Die Hard has solid but over the top action considering the franchise (the previous film had this problem as well but at least you still cared). The villains are forgettable and it's difficult to care about the McClane father-son relationship which remains as cold as the city of Moscow. Shame.

Holy shit, talk about inflation. Mallrats is a film which was funny as shit when I first discovered Smith and Jay & Silent Bob. Now that some time has passed and the original crush has faded, all that's left in Mallrats is few funny moments and lots of unfunny filler. Jason Lee remains the highlight and saves what can be saved.

Wonder Boys is a criminally underrated feel good drama picture. Douglas is warm and likeable in the lead role of a college professor who has written a classic novel in the past and has since become a prisoner of it since he can't bring himself to finish a new book. Hanson (8 Mile, L.A. Confidential) directs with his usual warm touch and makes the characters and brilliant story come alive in a way only few can.

For fuck's sake, kill this shitty franchise already! Honestly, what the hell do you people see in these crappy movies? This is the piece of shit that finally broke the camel's back. I give up. The Resident Evil films give sell-out movies an even worse name. They brought back Rodriguez and all these other dead characters and for what? Some lame ass virtual environment battle ground something or other. I don't give a shit how much it pleases the gamers, because it's a different medium and whatever the games are and were, doesn't mean diddly shit to a film buff such as myself whom has never played the games and WILL never play the fucking games. Shitty, hacky, uninspired and stoopid movie franchise. Whatever. I can't bring myself to care enough to even trash this hacky 3D gimmicky series further.

I am not my job or how much money I have in the bank.

Just felt like sharing my views and opinions about these films and related topics with you, but feel free to let me know if there's a particular film of which you'd like me to write about. If I haven't seen it, I'll try to make an effort to find it and review it for you.
Bare in mind that I'm only just getting started. There's not much material yet, but Rome wasn't built in a day either. Right?? :) and also, I'm a Finnish guy so give me a break if my english isn't 100%.